


Galatea

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Gladiator (2000)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-22
Updated: 2003-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the festival of Saturnalia, Commodus and Lucilla revisit a secret childhood game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Galatea

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ghani Blue

 

 

Galatea 

In the winter before her father's death, in the winter before her world whirled round so completely that, afterwards, it seemed impossible that the same constellations still marked the sky above, that the same stones still rose to meet her feet below, Lucilla never once felt warm within the walls of the palace. Although she gave no word of complaint, although her face remained a mask as she walked the open corridors, when alone in her chambers she drew her fur-lined palla tightly around her shoulders, and pressed her arms across her body in a motion of protection, of defense. In the evenings, as her son lay curled in her arms, his small body radiated a drowsy heat even on the coldest nights, and as the days shortened to solstice Lucilla began to pull away from him even before he fell asleep, afraid that the sinking chill of her body would rob him of his warmth the way cold water robbed the bodies of the drowned, chilling their very blood to seawater. 

During the daytime, too, she touched Lucius less and less often, afraid that even the casual brush of fingers at his brow would somehow infect him with her own inner cold. Sometimes now she found him gazing at her with a look much beyond his years, a look both philosophical and pained, eyes bright with contained tears. Her brother, too, had looked at her that way once, too, as he grew to adolescence and she to womanhood, when she began to turn more and more from his touch. In her widowed years, though, she and Commodus had spent more time together, and now, he, too, grew restless at her reserve, following her steps with eyes as bright and pained as Lucius'. 

In this new coldness, Lucilla she felt herself as alone as a soldier camped in frozen fields far distant from the fields of home - untouched, yet forever watched by the eyes of both enemy and ally.   
 

* * *

  


"Lucilla, your grace...I have come to you at the request of my good masters." 

Her brother's voice broke through her silent thoughts, to where her mind drifted, roaming to a snow-bound North, where the cords knotted at her waist had turned to armor, where her sandals, caked with snow, grew to heavy greaves. His words at that moment registered little sense, and she looked quickly to the doorway to see Commodus, fair face flushed red along the cheeks and jaw, standing there in the thin toga usually worn by his servants. The toga reached only to his knees, and the sight of his thickly muscled calves, lightly covered with hair, surprised Lucilla, who remembered her brother's legs bare and coltish, elongated and graceful, barely distinguishable from her own. Commodus, who had followed her gaze, smiled broadly, then gave a quick bow of his head. 

"Your grace," he said, his smile carrying into the thickness of his voice, "my masters have sent me to see if I may be of service to you." 

Lucilla stood and exchanged a glance with her servant, Rufina, who had been in the process of unpinning her mistress' hair when Commodus had appeared. In the flickering lights of her chambers, the golden pins glittered, savage, in Rufina's hands, and at her mistress' incredulous look, she simply replied, "Io Saturnalia." 

Lucilla smiled. "Io Saturnalia, indeed," she said, walking over to her brother. Outside of her official appearances at the temple, Lucilla had done little to mark the festival, choosing only to have a quiet dinner together with her servants on the first night of the festival. Since then, she had done her best to ignore the shouting from the streets, and, indeed, had managed to barely mark most of the revelry while her mind was turned inwards towards the rising intrigues in the senate, or outward to the borders of her father's empires. Commodus, though, had clearly embraced the festival fully, exchanging places with his servants, and, judging by the state of his clothes and hair, indulging in as much wine as possible. 

As Lucilla neared him, he ducked his head again, holding one hand over his mouth to hide, unsuccessfully, his joyful, drunken smile. Lucilla looked behind him to his "good masters," a collection of his servants, all dressed awkwardly in his clothes, two sporting bloodied eyes, and all of them looking more petrified than usual. A young boy, one of Commodus' newest servants, swayed unsteadily on his feet, and the older man next to him grabbed his small arm tightly in his hand to prevent the boy from spilling his wine down the front of his borrowed robes, under which, even in their loose state on the boy's frame, Lucilla recognized her brother's finest toga. And tomorrow, when Commodus awoke, beaten from the wine, whom would he blame for the state of his clothes? Lucilla pressed her lips together, and looked as warmly as she could at Commodus. 

"Well, if your masters wished you to see me, then you had better come in." Commodus's mouth widened even further behind his fingers. As he brushed by her, touching her on the cheek with his dampened fingertips, she gave a brief nod to his servants, who quickly scattered back towards their own quarters. A gust of wind tunneled along the corridor, causing the torches to spit in their sconces, and in this shuttering light their shadows flicked in and out of existence on the stone walls. The billowing hang-cloths revealed the night sky to her in patches, the stars sharp in the new moon darkness. Fighting a shudder of wind-borne cold, Lucilla turned back to the smoky aerie of her own room. There was, it seemed, no place she could step to avoid the cold, and, here, in Commodus's presence, she did not fold in upon herself for warmth. 

Commodus, for his own part, his hair askew around his handsome face, did not look cold at all, and, in fact, Lucilla thought he looked as happy as a faithful hound finally granted permission to enter its master's tent, and his body fairly shook as he bowed once again to her. Rufina, pins still glittering in her hands, stared at him with widened eyes, and left quickly when Lucilla dismissed her. Alone, brother and sister did not speak at first, and the silence of the rooms was broken only by the spitting of the fires in the constant draft of wind. Commodus crossed the short distance between them, and gazed at her almost conspiratorially. 

"Well, your grace, what would you have me do for you?" His voice was scratchy, strained, and his breath sharp with drink and bile. 

"Commodus," Lucilla said, her voice sombre with reproach, "I would have you stop behaving so. Will you not soon put aside these games? Our armies march to protect our borders, and here you are drunk and frightening the servants." 

"It is as the festival demands, your grace." 

"Stop calling me that," Lucilla said sharply, stepping back. 

"Are you displeased with me, then...Lucilla?" Commodus asked, his smile faltering. 

Lucilla's face softened at the open look of fear and hurt on her brother's face, but she did not answer. "Are you so displeased that it pains you even to touch me anymore?" 

Lucilla turned from him, then, uncertain what to answer, how to tell her brother of the chill that seemed to have taken her body, or of the hunger she now saw writ raw across his features. 

"You're so cold to me now," he murmered from behind her, breath now playing against her shoulder, and from his quavering voice Lucilla sensed a reproach for all her coldness, both of flesh and feeling. "I wonder if you even love me anymore." Lucilla stayed silent, her eyes traveling over the draperies of her room, over the long platform of her bed, the glimmering bowls of flame that flickered in the gusts of wind. "Do you love me, sister? Do you love me still, even though you're so cold to me? So cold, so beautiful...you're..." Commodus paused, skimming calloused fingers along her jawbone; he was standing now at her side, gazing at her stoic face, "...you're just like a statue." 

This last word he pronounced deliberately, probingly. Statue. The word was a key to one of their childhood games, one of the games that had grown decidedly more dangerous as they became teenagers, one that Lucilla knew they should have stopped playing long before they did. They had played it even in the weeks before her marriage to Lucius, and their games then had been concentrated, intense, sister and brother both grown silent - she with apprehension, he with a sort of grim anger, and both weighed down with a heaviness, with the unspoken knowledge that all of this, soon, had to end. In this moment, though, in this winter of cold and isolation, she did not run from the word, from the world it opened. Here in her darkened chamber, the air charred with incense, her brother's body warm against her own, she did not turn from his touch but stiffened beneath it, and when he stepped away she remained as she had been, frozen. Commodus, coming around to face her, smiled with the open joy of a child to see her standing so before him, her sky-eyes wide but unfocused, her body still except for the barely perceptible rising and receding of her narrow chest. 

"You are still my statue, aren't you?" he asked, his own eyes wide and shining. "My...beautiful...statue." He grabbed her face in his hands, winding his fingers into her half-unbound hair, resting his forehead against hers; locked in the game, Lucilla did not flinch or smile, or give any indication that she was even aware of his presence. Commodus laughed, delighted. Letting go of her hair, he slid his hands down the chill lengths of her arms, lowering his face to her collarbone, where the tickling heat of his breath had many times won the game for him before, Lucilla dissolving into laughter, her body suddenly coming to life beneath his mouth, his hands. Now, though, she remained motionless, responding only through the flush that rose along her skin where his breath had lingered. 

"Will you not forfeit to me so easily?" he asked, his voice hitching with his suddenly uneven breath, "Will you not move beneath your sculptor's hands?" 

He lowered his face again to her clavicle, his left hand light at her neck, and slowly, as if testing or doubting both their nerves, he slid his right hand over the front of her chiton, skimming the soft rise of her breast. Beneath the thin cloth her nipple grew tight at the stimulation, rising to a sharp point of feeling just on the edge of pain. In earlier years, she might have gasped at this, and yielded her position as statue, but now, after childbirth, after widowhood, she rode through this sensation without a sound. She was afraid, too; afraid to move, afraid to break this sudden contact both desired and reviled. Later, she might regret this, but at this moment, she wanted nothing more than to feel her brother's hands pressing, warm, against her body, undoing the knots of armor at her waist, breaking the loneliness of winter's cold. 

Encouraged by his statue's lack of protest, Commodus moved his face downwards until he could nuzzle at Lucilla's breasts through the cloth; easily now his mouth found her nipples, biting and sucking at them each in turn. When he was younger, he did this always without finesse, his mouth clamping as painfully to her breast as an adder's might, but now he took her gently into his mouth, his fingers ever roving along her arms, along the sideways swell of her small breasts. Although her eyes still gazed, distant, Lucilla's pale cheeks were darkening with a long forgotten flush, and as he touched her, fingers playing the knots in her chiton, his body pressed to her hips and thighs, her blood seemed to surge towards his warmth, a second pulse arising to keep time with his caresses. She fought to keep her body still as his hands and mouth traced her cloth-bound flesh, occasionally sliding against her bare skin with the feel of smoldering coals. 

His fingers slid downwards now, down into the folds of cloth beneath her waist, rubbing and stroking all around until she began to feel as though all her blood now rushed below, burning, and all her body focused on the point where his fingers plied, her thoughts lost to time and sense until he pushed inside of her with a deep and sudden touch, pressing at the swollen walls of her sex with a force that made her grasp and grab his wrist to stop him. For a moment, they were both statues, frozen as they looked at each other, Lucilla's face cast over a sheen of sweat, Commodus' eyes fierce, piercing. He pressed his finger into the cloth, into her, and even with the cloth keeping them from untrammeled touch she shuddered at the depth of this sensation. Lucius had once found this place in her, a brief spot of pure pleasure that opened in her like the wall opened to Pyramis and Thisbe, but his fingers had never found it again. Now, in a moment, her brother's hand lay at her very core, warming her from within, her body surging now with the warm salinity of a southern sea. Though she grabbed his wrist more strongly now, he did not stop pressing upwards, and it was with a soldier's force that she kept herself from giving in to this touch, from pushing herself against her brother's fingers until the world collapsed and reformed anew. 

"No, Commodus, " she said, as evenly as she could, "I have moved. I forfeit the game." 

There stares lay heavily on each on each other, their breath jagged in the stillness. Guided by the press of her hand on his wrist, Commodus slowly, reluctantly pulled his fingers from within her. Where her chiton now flowed free, a damp stain blossomed at the point of their contact. Their bodies, now warm, seemed almost to steam in the cold, their skin, where exposed, shimmering in the inconstant torch-light. Commodus, looking up at Lucilla, seemed poised on the edge of tears or anger, his mouth swollen from kissing cloth and skin. 

They stayed that way, motionless, while winds blew their clothes to them, while their flesh cooled, while stars whirled in a distant sky, but no more touches passed between them then, no words of acknowledgement or acquiesence. 

As Commodus slipped at last into drunken sleep, Lucilla lay awake in the glassy hours before dawn, burning with a newly awakened warmth, a warmth sown into her like a seed or a secret, one that she carried with her through borderlands and deathbed tears, that she could not cast away even after the sight of bodies broken in the sand, where Commodus' fingers lay curling to blood that was not her own. 

 


End file.
